A New Perspective on the Protests, at New York’s Battery Park

In Battery Park yesterday, just outside Manhattan's Museum of the American Indian, with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in full view across the harbor, thousands of New Yorkers gathered to protest Donald Trump’s travel bans on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries and the president’s vow to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. Yesterday was the second full day of nationwide rapid-response protests. Thousands more continued to fill airports throughout the country: in Los Angeles, where an estimated 7,000 protesters gathered at LAX in support of the detainees; in Chicago; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Dallas; Raleigh, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Birmingham, Alabama. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was swiftly enacting other changes, among them installing Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News, as a member of the National Security Council, and casually tweeting references to World War III.

“This is a dark hour for our country,” wrote Representative John Lewis on Saturday as he stationed himself at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to wait for news of Iranian families attempting to return home.

Battery Park, originally a defense to protect the seaward entrance to the city, was transformed into a human fortification against hate. Chants of “No wall, no registry, no white supremacy!” were alternated with rounds of “No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here!” Protesters were joined by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and New York City public advocate Letitia James. Some signs bore the well-traveled, slightly windbeaten look of having weathered a very long week of protests, repurposed from Inauguration Day’s Disrupt J20 protest, from last Saturday’s Women’s March, Tuesday’s DeFund DAPL rallies, and Wednesday’s CAIR vigil against the "Muslim Ban" in Washington Square just a few nights before. But messages like “Trade Racists for Refugees” took on new urgency; a Statue of Liberty on a poster with the word balloon “Did I stutter?” felt all purpose; the insistent, highlighter-bright colors of “RESIST, RESIST, RESIST, RESIST, RESIST” seemed to specifically address the protest-weary. Handheld copies of the U.S. Constitution flapped in the wind.

As the crowds began to fidget, waiting to be allowed to march forward, a peppy New Orleans–style second line of saxophones and trumpets broke out somewhere in the ranks, lifting flagging spirits. There were plenty of patches sewn onto jackets for the frigid temperatures—the heart of “I Heart New York” replaced with a solidarity fist. A Chihuahua, wearing a Chihuahua-size sign that read “No Muslim Ban! No Wall! Yes Dogs!,” shivered inside its owner’s bag. A little girl carried a handmade sign that read, simply, “You Can Come to My House.”

Some 500 feet above, where aerial photographer George Steinmetz cast his lens, things took on a different shape—as they tend to do when seen from a great height. People filled in every corner of the park, occasionally eclipsed by trees. A lone police helicopter patrolled the airspace. Steinmetz kept a respectful distance from the scene below, wary of creating an atmosphere of surveillance. “I was surprised there were no other media helicopters,” he said later. He could see police cars forming a sort of wall in the streets, but things, he said, “looked chill.” The ant colony of peaceful protesters below could have been at a massive concert, he said, except that it was winter. “Even the ice-skating rinks in New York are deserted after Christmas.” He spent a year photographing the city from the air. “I really haven’t seen anything like this wave of protests since the Vietnam War.”

At street level, cheers erupted and echoed off the walls as the march finally began, heading north on Greenwich Street toward One World Trade Center. Near the Oculus, a tourist opened a pizza box and offered slices as the crowd surged again. On Reade Street, a driver from Yemen, stalled in traffic, rolled down the window of his cab and high-fived marchers in steady succession. Adam Almaghribi, originally from Tangier, Morocco, walked up Greenwich, broadcasting the scene around him on Facebook Live, with his friend Maysoun, who had worn her hijab for the occasion. “This person [President Trump] is trying to separate America, but here are people coming together,” said Almaghribi. He’d spent the previous day at JFK’s Terminal 4, alongside thousands of fellow protesters. “It was beautiful,” he said. “It made you feel people were really coming together doing the same thing.”

Close to Foley Square, two teenagers jumped up on some scaffolding and unfurled a giant Mexican flag as cheers erupted around them. Night began to fall. Candles came out, and glow-in-the-dark “RESIST” signs and a phalanx of cell phones rose up with them, cameras flashing. From above, they looked like constellations.